Real stories Archives - Page 11 of 15 - Soft Skills

Trust Yourself and Take Your Own Path

by Lei Han

I turned 40 this year. I don’t know about you, but in my 20s, I always thought that 40 year olds were very responsible people. I also thought that 40 year olds seemed to know what they were doing — they seemed to have life more figured out. They were usually married, with a house,… ... read more

Don’t Care Too Much at Work

by Lei Han

It may sound counter-intuitive for me to recommend that you shouldn’t care too much at work. However, after reading this story, hopefully you can understand and appreciate why you should not care too much, if you want to accelerate your career success. On Monday, I had a morning phone meeting with one of the data team… ... read more

Transition to Managing People is a Roller Coaster Ride

by Lei Han

If you want to advance in your career, advancement to people management is an important milestone to achieve. It takes 5-10 years to get promoted to manager. That’s like the initial climb into a Roller Coaster ride. The top looks wonderful and it’s thrilling to keep climbing up and up the team member ladder until eventually you reach… ... read more

Someone Took Credit for Your Work – What to Do

by Lei Han

In the work-place, is it better to ensure you individually are given credit for your work, or that the team benefits from your work? My team recently submitted a proposal of which I prepared more than 75%. In fact, of the 25% my analyst (who is junior to me) prepared, I had to revise significantly…. ... read more

Recovering from a Work Setback – Dos and Donts

by Lei Han

I had an important meeting to lead yesterday. After six months of managing this project, I was hoping this meeting would be the final one needed to get there necessary agreement from all the key business stakeholders. Everything was looking good — we already went through 4 rounds of feedback, and addressed all the concerns… ... read more

Speaking Up in Meetings – Why and How to Do it

by Lei Han

When I first worked at McKinsey after college, I was pretty scared of speaking up. I distinctly remember sitting in the large conference room with another analyst, our manager, the senior manager, and the Partner on the project, to discuss our strategy for a consumer business client. The Partner discussed a strategy that frankly… ... read more

Dealing with Difficult Personalities – What Not to Do

by Lei Han

How should we deal with difficult personalities? I have been thinking about how to write about this topic for three weeks now. I realized it’s hard, because there are so many potential dimensions and scenarios to this question: Who is this person that you consider “difficult” – a senior executive, boss, peer, colleague, customer, vendor,… ... read more